Webguild: Goog G1 Android This Week

"The newest entrant into the mobile handheld device market and clear would-be competitor to Apple’s iPhone is about the hit the stores next week. Google’s G1 phone will be available for purchase on October 22 exclusively through T-Mobile. G1 runs on the Android open source operating system and comes pre-loaded with mobile optimized versions of the following Google apps: Search, Maps, Gmail, Calendar, Talk, and YouTube. It does not synchronize with Outlook or allow the use of Microsoft’s exchange server. Surprise, surprise!

It appears pocket-sized like the iPhone only a little bulkier and heavier and has a slight curvature on the bottom menu bar. Not sure how that will work in your pocket but I am sure they tested that out. The phone has a slide-out Qwerty keyboard for easier typing versus the usual keypad. The battery lasts for five hours of talk time and about five and a half days of standby time.

The buzz on the Web is mixed. It has been discovered in the fineprint that the G1 has a kill-switch which eseentially means that Google can remove any application that it feels violates its terms and conditions. The New York Times said that despite some notable features “It’s not pure joy, though. The keys don’t click down much. Worse, you have to keep turning the phone 90 degrees from its customary vertical orientation every time you need to enter text. That gets old fast.” And according to the Wall Street Journal “Overall, I found the G1’s user interface inferior to the iPhone’s. It lacks the iPhone’s ability to flick between multiple pictures and Web pages, or to zoom in and zoom out of a photo or Web page by simply using two fingers to “pinch” or expand the image. It also doesn’t automatically change the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape simply by turning the phone.”"